14ymedio, Havana, 21 August 2024 — No official media published details about the four trials that were held this week in the municipal court of Songo-La Maya against two people accused of theft, slaughter and trafficking of livestock, and two others for attacking law enforcement officers. The important thing – and the Communist Party newspaper in Santiago de Cuba dedicated a whole article to explain it – was to emphasize the “exemplary” character of the trial, which was attended by a “representation of the people” and Cuban Television´s cameras.
In one of the cases of attack, according to Sierra Maestra, the assaulted person was a police station chief who “went to carry out prophylactic work with a suspect.” The accused was arrested and taken to the police station, where he was given an official warning.
However – the newspaper ambiguously says – something provoked the detainee again, who “once they were inside the office, the accused stood up violently and assaulted the police officer, even tearing the shirt of the military uniform he was wearing.” Several police officers immobilized the man, they add, “to avoid more violent physical aggressions.”
“When we carry out exemplary trials, we enhance communication so that the message we want to convey reaches specific recipients”
Regarding another case linked to illegal slaughter, Sierra Maestra limited itself to saying that the accused had incurred “very repeatedly” in meat trafficking. “It is about a defendant who was caught by the police authorities on the public road in a public transport at the time he was transporting a certain amount of beef,” they explain. There was no information on the other two prosecutions
“When we carry out exemplary trials, we enhance communication so that the message we want to convey reaches certain recipients,” said Geovanis Mestre, one of the judges of the provincial court of Santiago, interviewed by Sierra Maestra. It is essential, he argued, that criminals know that the authorities are targeting illegal cattle slaughtering and that the punishments will be severe.
These trials were not chosen “at random,” said Mestre, but due to the “recurrence” of cattle theft and slaughter in Santiago, a moment that has been “drawing the attention” of the Police, the court decided to make it a “priority behavior in the criminal legal confrontation.”
Mestre invoked Article 29, paragraph 1, of the Criminal Code, which allows for trials guaranteeing “public participation,” as an exercise of “control” over jurisdictions where the crime is repeated. He stated that the ruling is issued “in the name of the Cuban people” so that the authorities can have the population attend the proceedings. It is not a matter of informing – he stressed – but of giving the trial a “preventive” character.
The judge was interested in emphasizing that Justice did not exaggerate the severity of the sentences and that his colleagues acted following the law. The defendants, he said, had “every opportunity to present the evidence they wanted and to make statements on several occasions.” These were ordinary proceedings, whose sentence has not yet been published.
The judge was interested in emphasizing that Justice did not exaggerate the severity of the sentences and that his colleagues acted following the law
From the massive criminal show trials of 1959, at the time of the Revolution – not infrequently resulting in capital punishment – to the famous case of Arnaldo Ochoa in 1989, the practice of the exemplary trial has not lost its validity in Cuba. As Mestre admits, the target of this kind of proceeding is clear: the offender and the entire population as well. That is why many international organizations and Cuban activists, such as Dagoberto Valdés, have harshly criticized the method.
“This is not exemplary because it is not educational, because instead of educating so that the courts exercise their function, they miseducate by using television and networks to take justice into their own hands,” explains Valdés, the founder of the Centro Convivencia, who – contrary to Mestre’s argument – claims that it is not legal, since it goes against human dignity, which, in theory, is guaranteed by the Constitution. “Can there be a decree, a discrete disposition of some entity that can publicly and repeatedly contradict the Law of Laws?”
Although the cattle situation has recently fallen into this category, it is in the opposition to the Government – and the crimes, such as contempt or attempt, attributed to it – where the exemplary trial has enjoyed stellar moments on Cuban Television. Programs such as Hacemos Cuba (We Make Cuba), led by the regime’s spokesman Humberto López, are presented as the media channel of Justice.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the Government also held more than a few exemplary trials. According to the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights, in June 2020 the police carried out “at least 67 arbitrary arrests,” mainly in the provinces of Havana, Santiago de Cuba and Villa Clara, and 74 “repressive actions of other types,” in particular, harassment through police subpoenas.
These arrests were followed by a “wave of exemplary trials” to “intimidate the population affected by the country’s poor economic situation.” “Several of these trials have been broadcast by the official media so that citizens can see how ruthless the system can be,” the Spain-based organization denounced at the time.
Translated by LAR
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